A compelling and challenging collection of tales that will entice readers.
A volume of short stories reflects aspects of the Black experience on the East and West coasts.
This prose collection from poet and fiction writer Juanita (following Manhattan My Ass, You’re in Oakland, 2020) features tales set in Northern California and the New York metropolitan area. Some are set in the present and recent past, while others reach back to the 1960s and ’70s. Some of the characters are political activists, working for the Black Panther Party and attending student conferences, while others are more practical than intellectual, focusing on day jobs, chronic pain, and failing relationships. The protagonist of “Making Room” sees ghosts. In “Driving,” just two paragraphs long, the narrator’s poor skills at the wheel tie her to the other motorists who keep her safe. In “Not a Through Street,” one of the more lighthearted works in the assemblage, a comedian works on her material while dealing with an attraction to her acupuncturist. “Between General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz” is the story of a hapless woman who tries her relatives’ patience one time too many, and “Triplets” explores family relationships from another, sadder, angle. “Huelbo” borrows from the author’s own autobiography in its depiction of a woman editing the Black Panther Party’s newspaper, with the fictional characters joined by historical figures. “If 9/11 Had Happened in Harlem, This Would Be a Different World” encapsulates its premise in the title, then dives into a sardonic alternative history in which some outcomes seem inescapable.
The thought-provoking and evocative collection offers stories with enjoyable and well-designed plots, a constant stream of vivid imagery (one house is “a light green between celery and vomit”) and well-turned phrases (“I began drinking legally about when he exited the womb”), and insightful meditations on why the world is the way it is. All have the idea of Blackness at their core, both implicitly and explicitly. Juanita’s characters understand the nuanced differences among Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco and the gradations of skin color elided by the Brown Paper Bag Test (characters are identified as “shades between sand and the shore”; “leaf brown”; and “the brown of an overripe peach”). Some of the tales explore the generational divide between parents who achieve the milestones of Black middle-class respectability and their children, who would rather overturn the system than rise to its upper ranks, particularly “Sorors,” a dark take on joining a Greek organization. A few of the settings and characters appear in multiple stories, but each one stands alone. Readers can easily follow Ouida into the Ira Levin–esque domestic horror of “A Lucky Day” without first watching her marriage fall apart in “The Hand.” The tales raise plenty of questions without offering easy answers, and the mix of historical and contemporary settings suggests that the questions of belonging, equity, love, and responsibility remain unsolved over the course of decades. Fans of Danzy Senna and ZZ Packer will find plenty to appreciate in these pages.
A compelling and challenging collection of tales that will entice readers.Pub Date: July 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1604893182
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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